


Scholarship is the Enemy of Romance

by runningscissors



Category: The Queen's Gambit (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Episode 6: Adjournment, Episode Related, F/M, Implied Sexual Content, Past Beth Harmon/Harry Beltik, Past Relationship(s), Recreational Drug Use, References to Addiction, Unresolved Emotional Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-19
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:41:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28175580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/runningscissors/pseuds/runningscissors
Summary: "Two worlds exist within Benny’s tiny apartment, and in them each, a different version of Benny and Beth resides."
Relationships: Beth Harmon/Benny Watts
Comments: 20
Kudos: 285





	Scholarship is the Enemy of Romance

**Author's Note:**

> Canon compliant. Set mid "Adjournment" post-Beth kicking Benny in the crotch.

Beth lays awake long after Benny has drifted off to sleep beside her, the sound of his breathing evening out in the darkness. She keeps her back turned; there’s a vulnerability in sleep she’s not willing to surrender to. She’d like to get up and wipe a flannel between her legs, maybe have a smoke. God, she wants a drink— something to fog her out, rather than the pills which only sharpen her thoughts. She does none of this, though, the worry of rousing Benny too great to move, even as her shoulder begins to ache. Beth doesn’t know why she’s annoyed, really. It’s not like she’d wanted Benny to fall about the bed spent and profess his love for her— he doesn’t love her, and she certainly doesn’t love him. But an acknowledgment of what had just happened wouldn’t have been remiss, that he’d enjoyed it as much as she had.

She’d never felt this way with Harry. In the few occasions they’d had sex, there’d been no afterglow. He'd never stayed around long enough for pillow talk, awkwardly retreating back to his own bed, and she’d been so indifferent to the whole thing anyway. There’s still a bit of guilt that lingers when she thinks of poor Harry. Beth hadn’t had any real amorous inclinations towards him, but then he’d kissed her, and sex had just felt like the logical next step— that’s what men and women did, didn’t they?

But sex, she now suspects, shouldn’t be about logic. 

Is that it then— is she put out because Benny seems just as indifferent to the whole thing as she had been with her classmate Tim or Harry? The way Benny bluntly rebuffed her at first, and then when they did have sex, it’s so inconsequential to him that it’s gone from his mind the moment it’s over, already replaced with chess and telling her what to do. It’s a rather humiliating prospect if true. But then Beth thinks about the way Benny’s eyes had seemed to burn black, his firm grip on her arm, and knows no one has ever looked at her or touched her that way.

Maybe this is all there is to sex? Chasing fleeting moments of pleasure as they come and nothing more. Beth has never been good at things she couldn’t quantitatively understand. She can’t see four or five steps in front of her when it comes to this— and maybe that’s what’s really bothering her. She’d known where she stood with Harry as far as she was concerned, and if he’d had other ideas, well, that was his problem, not hers. 

But what about now?

+

The next morning Beth is sure to rise first, gathering her clothes in the faint morning light streaming down from the high set windows in the other room.

Benny pads out of the bedroom sometime later, scratching at the back of his head with a yawn, then at the bare skin between his belly button and his low slung jeans. She is sure to keep her eyes from lingering anywhere too long, focusing back on the game she’s set up at the board.

“Whose game?” Benny asks, leaning over her shoulder, his hand planted on the tabletop, caging her in on one side. It’s intimate but casual in a way she’s not convinced he wouldn’t have done _before._  
  
“Morphy,” she mumbles, sliding her knight up the queen’s side. Benny’s brows furrow in question as he turns to look at her, and she shifts away from the feel of his breath on her neck. “Something Harry Beltik said to me, woke up thinking about it is all.”

He shrugs, pushing away from the table as his robe swirls around his legs. Well, that settles it, she thinks. If he doesn’t care, then neither will she.

The day progresses the same as it has for the past three weeks, and there’s relief in that. Beth understands chess; in this, her and Benny’s minds are in sync as they retreat back into their previously established roles. There are subtle differences though, minor things Beth might not have even considered if she wasn’t so keyed up— the way he invades her space, his fingers quick over hers as they act out a move like a pantomime; those cocksure smirks of his; the heavy feel of his eyes on her when he thinks she doesn’t notice, it sends prickles down her spine, like the soft and fleeting brush of Townes’ fingers on her cheek all those years ago. It’s the feeling she’d wanted that night she let Tim, the resigned capitalist, take her virginity and had been left sorely disappointed. 

By the time the last rays of natural light have fled, Beth has just about convinced herself that last night was a one-time thing, something they simply needed to get out of their systems. However, only nighttime will tell definitively, and as she readies herself for bed, she tries to ignore the quickening of her pulse.

“Hurry up and get in here, Harmon,” Benny calls from his bedroom when she exits the bathroom. “I’m wasting electricity.”

_Oh._

Benny is already sprawled out under the covers when she edges into the room, his nose in an old copy of _Chess Review_ and the pale skin of his bare chest alit with the soft yellow glow of the bedside lamp. It casts shadows on his skin, gives his scrawny body the illusion of definition. She crawls into bed stiffly, hands under her cheek as she lays her head upon the pillow to look at him in profile.

“Tomorrow, I want you to look at Heuacker’s bishop endgame,” Benny says, closing the magazine with the flick of his wrist. “I know he’s a problemist, and you have no time for them, but it’s smart work, and I know for a fact you haven’t seen it before.”  
  
“Okay,” Beth replies. She wishes she could read whatever is going on in his head, but frustratingly, he’s always been better at reading her than she was him. Benny turns his lamp off, and the room goes dark, the only light coming from streetlights outside. Beth can just make Benny’s features out as he turns to face her and watches as his tongue peeks out to wet his lips. Then he’s moving, hauling her to him as he places a searing open-mouthed kiss to the space where her jaw and neck meet, and her breath catches in her throat. 

“This all right?” He asks, nosing at her skin, and her hand shoots out to clutch at his hair, the feel of it thick and soft between her fingers. Is this how he wants to play it, intimacy under cover of night, and when the morning comes, the board is reset? A clear divide between the professional and the _non-professional_?  
  
That’s more or less what she’d done to Harry, ignored his clumsy heartfelt overtures by daylight, then taken him to bed when there was no more chess to be had for the night.

Somehow, though, this feels different.

“Beth?” He prompts after another moment, his mouth now at the joining of her shoulder, and she realizes she never responded.  
  
“Yeah,” she gasps, arching into him when his hand dips under her sleep shirt and begins moving up her ribcage, fingers dancing over her ribs like the way they hover over a row of pawns. “Yeah, this is fine.”  
  
His thumb grazes the underside of her breast, and she feels him smile against her.  
  
“Good,” he mumbles, “that’s good.”

+

Two worlds exist within Benny’s tiny apartment, and in them each, a different version of Benny and Beth resides. There is one world contained within the confines of Benny’s bedroom— a world with wet, eager kisses and the push/pull of their bodies, laughter and coy flirting as they lounge about the bed together naked. Benny is sweet in a way he never is anywhere else, tender even— this is _Bedroom Benny_ as Beth has dubbed him. The way he pulls her closer for just a moment before releasing his grasp as he falls asleep; the soft feel of his fingers skimming along her skin; the gentle kiss he places just behind her ear. Beth wakes in the mornings, Benny’s arm slung across her torso, their legs intertwined. She’s never slept with someone this way, and while it has been an adjustment of sorts, she’s not opposed to it. She wouldn’t admit it, but it feels nice to be held. This is _Bedroom Beth_ , the version of herself who finds pleasure in giving up control, who basks in what she cannot give herself— comfort, affection, and attention.

Something is calming about Benny’s presence in bed at night. Beth isn’t used to sleeping alone. She’d gone from the little bed shared with her momma, to a dormitory full of girls, to the Wheatley’s where even the sound of Alma’s drunken snores were comforting. Alone in the house at night, she’d felt like the silence could swallow her whole. It’s why she’d been so quick to invite Harry to stay, another body to fight off the quiet.

She’s been alone in her head for so long, patterns and numbers that no one but her can see, but it feels nice to reach out and have someone touch back in a way that the booze and pills can’t. She wonders if Benny ever feels that way— their minds work so similarly, it’s unnerving really— she wonders if he ever feels lonely too.

Outside, a siren wails as Benny’s upstairs neighbour begins his daily morning callisthenics of jumping jacks, and the day has begun. There’s a very boyish quality to Benny when he wakes, before his mind kicks in and his ego and chess take over. The way he squints as his eyes adjust, and the unruly nature of his hair. When Beth raises to dress, Benny often watches her, eyes dark with desire and smirk on his lips, cajoling her back into bed. And _after_ , they both roll out of bed, skin flushed and sweaty, and she races for a shower while Benny sniffs at a t-shirt he’s grabbed from the floor to determine if it’s clean enough to wear again. 

And as they pass the threshold of his bedroom, the world shifts and they step into the second one, the one confined to the sixty-four squares on a chessboard and nothing else. The softness melts away as she loses herself to this world, just as she has since she was nine-years-old.

Alma had always stressed that there was more to life than chess, and maybe that’s true, but whatever else is out there, it’s not as beautiful as chess, doesn’t flood Beth’s mind with colour the way chess does. She knows it’s the same way for Benny. He may give off the impression that he has one foot planted in “the real world” as Alma had put it— he’s well-read, well-travelled, intelligent, gregarious— but it’s as much a facade as the hat and leather jacket are. Crack Benny’s skull open, and chess notation would spill out, just the same as it would for Beth. She finds it hard to reconcile these two versions of Benny, of herself. Beth is never more herself than when she is sat at a chessboard, in control and a win burning like a beacon before her. So, who is this strange girl who rolls about the bed with a lover, giggling and breathless? The same is true for Benny. Benny is never more Benny in her mind than when pontificating chess or sat across the board from her. But Benny is also the man who teases her with sarcastic quips, whose smile is boyish and charming, who blushes with pleasure when she runs her fingers through his hair.

When this is all over, when the bubble bursts and she goes back to her life in Lexington, will she ever be able to look at Benny and not see the little grin he sometimes gets when they kiss? The sound he makes when he comes- a small guttural moan and a curse like it’s been ripped from his mouth.   
  
Will she see him across a room and think longingly of his arms? It seems preposterous; this is _Benny Watts_ after all and therefore more likely that she’d roll her eyes. But still, she can’t help but wonder.

+

“Here,” Benny says one evening, opening a small cedar box he’s pulled from his bookshelf. Inside lays two joints, and she watches as Benny lights one with his zippo and takes a long drag. “Your mind could use the break.”   
  
“What about my sobriety?” Beth asks sardonically from her seat on the floor pillows, two chess boards set up in front of her as she plays out simultaneous games against long-dead Soviet Grandmasters of the past. Benny throws her a look, a plume of smoke escaping his mouth. There’s something strangely attractive about watching Benny smoke, the firm line of his lips and the curve of his wrist.

“C’mon Harmon,” he drawls, “my treat. Wexler gave me this, I forgot I had it until I was looking for a book today. It’s just pot, no big deal. Think of it as medicinal.”

Beth rolls her eyes, reaching for the proffered joint and taking a hit as Benny pads off to fiddle with his record player. It burns her throat, not the way liquor does, but in a clawing way that leaves a bitter taste in her mouth as she exhales with a small cough, and Benny smirks at her over his shoulder.

“The first and last time I was stoned, I lost my virginity to a random boy in my Russian night school class,” Beth says conversationally, examining the roach. Benny looks up, brows raised, and Beth grins at him, taking another long drag, holding the smoke in as long as she can, till it fills her with heat like the fireball at the end of the joint, then releases it all.“The sex was terrible.” She adds in an afterthought, and Benny plops down beside her, pulling her legs over his lap as he sidles up to her.  
  
“Ah,” he intones, taking the joint from her, their fingers touching in an almost caress as he does. “Your comment makes much more sense now.” Benny’s shirt is buttoned low, and the glint of his chains draws her eyes. She follows the movement of them as he inhales and exhales, and when she looks back up at his face, his eyes are black as coal, pupils shot wide.  
  
“Hmm?”

“Your _‘that’s what it’s supposed to feel like,’_ the first time we had sex.” It’s the first real acknowledgment of what they do behind Benny’s closed bedroom door. It feels like a breach to do it out here in the living room— the two worlds colliding. It was Benny who’d implemented the unspoken rule in the first place; it was unsportsmanlike to change the game on her now.

“I didn’t get what you’d meant then, but now I do.You’d never been good and properly fucked before.” Beth flushes at his crude words, heat rising up the back of her neck and chest as Benny grins smugly at her. He’s never spoken to her like this before. 

“I’ve been f-fucked before,” she says defensively, stuttering over the word, even though it was her who’d indicated in the first place that that was very much _not_ true.

Benny’s look is predatory like he’s pinned her to a corner of the board with just his pawns. So at odds with the uncertainty that had laced his voice that first night. _Do you still like my hair?_

“Really?” He scoffs, calling her bluff. “By who? And don’t tell me Beltik, like there’s any way that snaggletoothed idiot is good in the sack.” The surprise must be evident on her face because he adds with a shrug, “I took an educated guess you’d played more than chess while he trained you.”

Beth wets her lips, her mouth feeling dry. “He got his teeth fixed.” A lame counter and she knows it. Benny just smiles in reply, and she snatches the joint to take another hit. Things feel unfairly one-sided, like he’s got her on the back foot, so Beth hops up, Benny collapsing in on himself from how propped around her he was, as she moves.  
  
“Beth—” he begins, halting whatever it is he’s about to say as Beth begins to move to the music. She can still see Harry, transfixed as she shimmied about in the living room to Peggy Lee. She’d unwittingly seduced him at that moment, but there’s nothing unwittingly about the way she feels now. Beth lets her eyelids fall, and her arms sway, joint dangling between her lips. Her eyes flutter open when she feels Benny take the joint from her mouth, the nub of the roach pinched between his long, thin fingers, as he stands before her and takes a toke himself. Beth feels like her limbs are made of lead, like she’ll sink to the floor under the weight of them. She stretches her arms out over Benny's narrow shoulders, forearms loosely crossed at the wrist and grins when Benny holds out the joint for her to take a final hit before stubbing out the dregs on his heavy metal ring.

“What’s this?” Benny cocks his brow, a little grin tugging at his lips as he slowly drags the pads of his fingers down the back of her arms, over the blades of her shoulder, to settle splayed along the small of her back. It sets a wash of tingles across her whole body— like his penetrating gaze or Townes soft touch, only doubled, tripled.

“It’s dancing,” Beth says, hooking her wrists so she can run her fingers through the ends of his hair, the texture soft and springy and fascinating to touch. “Don’t they have dancing where you’re from?”  
  
“Yes,” he says like he’s trying to smother his amusement, “they have dancing.”

“Yes,” she replied tauntingly, “but when’s the last time you did any?”

Benny laughs now. His hands are so warm it’s like they could melt right through the fabric of her shirt. “I don’t make a habit of it.”  
  
“Of course you don’t,” Beth snorts, rolling her eyes. 

They fall silent for a few moments, Beth’s gaze feeling sticky and slow like molasses as she peers over Benny’s shoulder to look around the apartment. Books, papers and chess boards scattered around the space, empty cups of coffee, his bohemian floor pillows piled on the floor. There’s not a lick of art hanging on the walls, just that drab textured wallpaper. Her nose had wrinkled when she’s first stepped foot in here, but she can’t deny she’s grown rather fond of it all, all these weeks later. When she meets his eyes, he has the queerest expression, soft yet intense at the same time, one she sometimes sees when they’re in bed or hovered over a board. She never knows what brings it on. 

“I’ve never danced with a man before,” she mumbles finally, cheeks flushing. Benny pulls her closer, fingers spreading so wide they curl around her waist. She likes the feel of it and resists the urge to lay her head on his shoulder.

“Neither have I,” he smirks. Beth tugs at his hair, shaking her head in amusement and embarrassment, and Benny chuckles. “When you’re a World Champion and Grandmaster, my new greatest claim to fame will be that I was Beth Harmon’s first dance.” Then he tips his chin down to press a kiss to the corner of her mouth, his moustache tickling her skin. 

Beth stares up at him as he pulls away, and his brows furrow.

“What?” He asks, his lips turning up in question. Beth shakes her head again, her thoughts muddled and foggy like her brain’s been replaced with cotton batting, and finally gives in to the urge to rest her cheek where his neck and shoulder join.

“That’s not normal, is it?” She asks, the words tumbling out without her consent. That night with the Apple Pi’s, she’d felt like an extraterrestrial, like they were speaking a language she couldn’t understand. Harry’s critique of her single-minded obsession. Watching students on the quad in Ohio, wondering if there was something she was missing out on. “More concerned with my Elo rating than boys, or music or _the traditional makings of a young lady_ as my mother used to say. Am I normal? I feel normal—” her fingers skim along the corded metal of Benny’s necklaces, the feel of it hot under her touch, “but my head sometimes…”

 _Doesn’t everybody?_ Benny had responded without thought, like playing out a chess game in your mind was the most obvious thing. And at that moment, Beth felt like she had been _seen,_ maybe for the first time. If she was some strange alien, then so was Benny, and here they were stranded on Earth together. 

“Jesus, I’m the last person you should ask,” Benny says. “I went pro as a literal child. I didn’t even finish high school. Compared to me, you’re—” he pauses, and their eyes meet. Beth feels like she could fall into his eyes. Fall and fall and _fall_ and never hit bottom. “Well, there’s no comparing you really, is there, Kid?”

She doesn’t know how he does that. It makes her feel small and big at the same time. The way he raises her up one second then knocks her back down a few pegs just to ensure she stays grounded.

“Benny,” she begins, but the words won't come. What does she even want to say? The room falls silent, nothing but white noise as the player comes to the end of the vinyl. Benny sighs heavily, rubbing at his face as he steps away to shut off the machine, and Beth suddenly feels bereft of something important, her body cold without Benny’s heat radiating into her.

“C’mon,” he says, switching off the lamps around them. “I’m wiped. Let’s call it a night.”

Whatever the moment had just been, it’s gone now.

In the morning, they'll wake, just as tangled in each other as the day before, and speak nothing of the previous night: the words unsaid, the actions not taken, the feelings not felt. 

The board resets once more.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Dead Hands (The Romantic Intellectualism Dichotomy Remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29598240) by [runningscissors](https://archiveofourown.org/users/runningscissors/pseuds/runningscissors)




End file.
